Volume 6: Secret Invasion Chapter 16: Damn Kang! I came to the Holy of Holies and you are not here at all! Where the hell are you?
After everything was arranged, Mason returned to New York alone.
Just like when he left, he was brought back by Nightcrawler. Agent Brand stayed at the Mutant Academy to help with the relocation and wait for news from Fury. Now that the X-Men have confirmed their participation in the war, the balance of power between the two sides in this confrontation is returning to normal.
But that's not what Mason is concerned about right now.
"We can't go any further."
Because of Mason's help to the academy, Night Walker was considerate enough to send him directly to a place several blocks outside the Sanctuary of the Holy of Holies in New York.
The two of them landed on the top of a building in the evening sunset. The Night Walker squatted on the eaves and pointed in the direction of the Holy of Holies. He said to Mason who took out the telescope:
"The mages have blocked off that place, and any spatial fluctuations will be detected by them. When the professor was still there, we still had some contact with Kamar-Taj, but now the two sides are strangers.
Cyclops told me not to cause any trouble at this time, but I suspect they must have noticed something when they sealed off their base in New York."
The blue devil-like fellow flexed his flexible tail, turned his head and said to Mason:
"Perhaps Doctor Strange has also sensed the Skrulls' infiltration and invasion of Earth. A spellcaster like him who calls himself the guardian of the world, it's impossible for him not to sense the bad things that are about to happen, right?"
"He has the Time Stone."
Mason used 2077's military binoculars to observe the environment around the Sanctuary and said calmly:
"As long as Stephen Strange wants to see, the future and the past have no secrets in his eyes, and the focus now is not whether Doctor Strange has discovered the Skrull conspiracy.
The point is, in the coming war, whose side will he be on?
Well, the mystics are patrolling around the Sanctuary disguised as ordinary people. It seems that they are under a lot of pressure. Under such circumstances, trying to sneak into the Sanctuary is simply courting death ."
"Indeed."
Nightcrawler nodded in agreement. As the teleportation master among the X-Men, he also thought that sneaking into the Sanctuary was impossible .
Fortunately, this was not a problem for him.
He said goodbye to Mason, then rolled down the building, stretched his body in mid-air, and disappeared into the air with a whoosh.
"Give me a suggestion, Hat."
Mason pushed the Sorting Hat on his head and said:
"You are the most accomplished master of magic that I know. Zha Kang is imprisoned in there right now, and I need your help to get him out."
"No, Mason."
The hat reminded calmly:
"Zhang Parker just told you that he found the energy signal here, but it doesn't mean that Constantine must be here.
I get a headache just by looking at those crisscrossing magic lines in front of me. This must be the base of a secret organization that has been passed down for as long as Hogwarts, but the power it has is ten times stronger than ours.
If you're thinking of sneaking in with the help of magic, I advise you to give up.
Unless you have the spellcasting ability of Doctor Fate, it is impossible to break through the monitoring barrier of the Sanctuary head-on.
But maybe you could try another approach.”
It paused, and said to Mason, who had put down his telescope:
"Didn't Batman always tell you not to fight on someone else's home turf? Find a way to make this your own. You didn't have the ability to do so before, but now you do.
This barrier is only detecting space and the flow of magic, but it does not hinder the inherent power of nature. These mages worship nature very much, and I can confirm this from their spellcasting style."
"I see. You are really smart."
Mason nodded and jumped down from the tall building like Night Walker.
He decomposed water molecules in the air and reassembled his body at a farther distance. After three "jumps", he arrived at the mouth of the Hudson River and jumped into the water without attracting any attention.
Having transformed into a water man, he no longer needed to worry about drowning in the water. After dissolving in water, Mason pulled out the Neptune's Trident from his bag and stuck it into the bottom of the river. With the power of this marine artifact, he began to change the surrounding climate.
He can violently move water to cause a rainstorm that covers the city.
But that method was too crude and could not be hidden from the vigilant mages.
According to the hat's advice, he must make it rain in a natural way, and wherever the raindrops fall is the area where Mason can move freely.
Therefore, in theory, as long as the rain was heavy enough, he could blend in with the rain and slip in without alerting the Sanctuary's warning magic.
The power of Neptune's Trident to harness the storm requires the blood of Atlantis to perfectly control it. Mason has Namor's DNA, although it is not enough to unlock all the power of this artifact. To be honest, it is a bit of a waste to just use it to bring rain.
After dozens of minutes of brewing, the concentration of water molecules above the city has reached saturation.
Wind started to blow again amidst the dark clouds, and soon raindrops began to fall into the city. As time went by, it turned into heavy rain, as if washing away the filth beneath the glamour of the entire city.
Mason, holding the trident, can easily feel what is happening in various places in the city through the falling raindrops. A car loses control and crashes into the roadside in Manhattan, a gang fight is going on in the dark alleys of Brooklyn, and in the small Parker Industrial Park in Queens that was bought by Mr. Zhang, there are SHIELD agents disguised as fishing.
This was the first time he expanded his abilities to this extent. A huge amount of information was transmitted into Mason's brain in the rain curtain generated by nature, but it did not make him feel panicked.
As his brain has been working at high speed for a long time, he can accept and analyze these situations.
"You can create water clones, Mason."
Beneath the water the Hat projected its voice into Mason's mind and said:
"The water flowing throughout the city is now under your control. Try it and make yourself appear in several places at the same time."
"Will this really not make me schizophrenic?"
Mason complained quietly.
"No, I won't."
The Isu ghost Consus also appeared at Mason's shoulder and whispered:
"The extrasensory senses brought by the Isu bloodline have changed you, my brother. This change is subtle. Your extraordinary thinking allows you to control this clone mode.
Just like running several threads simultaneously in a computer, you are used to doing several things at once in the manufacturing process, which is theoretically no different from controlling several clones at the same time.
Of course, the first time will always be a bit hectic, but with your current learning ability, I think..."
"etc!"
Mason suddenly shuddered.
He interrupted Consus's description, and while trying to conjure up several water clones in the rain-shrouded area, he said to the hat and Consus:
"Your wonderful analogy! Linking the water clones with the manufacturing process suddenly gave me an idea. I used to wonder if if an individual's time could not be extended, could we achieve some kind of qualitative change through the accumulation of quantity?
You say, if I create twenty water clones to try out ten categories of manufacturing techniques at the same time, then... huh? Why are you guys silent?"
Mason's two "portable grandfathers" fell silent. After a few seconds, the hat and Consus cursed in unison:
"Curly dog!"
"Hehe, you can mock me all you want, I just feel like I've finally found the correct use for my mutant powers."
Mason was amused by the two guys' reactions. He grinned and said:
"I think it's doable, let's give it a try."
He closed his eyes and began to use his "magic power" at the bottom of the Hudson River. Within a few minutes, twelve "Masons" emerged one by one in various parts of the city.
Just like the twisted posture of the slime monster Kevin, after adapting and trying, he transformed himself into Mason Cooper wearing different clothes and began to move freely.
He can also create more clones, but currently controlling twelve water clones at the same time is the limit of his good control.
Mason in Manhattan ran to the out-of-control car on the street to help, dragged the seriously injured driver out and gave first aid on the roadside. Mason in Brooklyn, dressed in a bat suit, hid above the dark alley, collecting rainwater to turn it into "water molecule bat darts" to shamelessly attack the gang members fighting below to practice shooting.
The three Masons who appeared in the Parker Industrial Park did not alarm the patrolling agents. Instead, they ran into Zhang Parker's blocked laboratory during the water conversion and began to tinker with engineering, trying to produce the prototype of BGF9000 before the rainstorm ended.
The remaining Masons found places to start doing other things, such as forging, tailoring, inscription, and jewelry.
The mode of these twelve "sub-threads" running simultaneously in Mason's brain made him dizzy at first, but Mason soon got the hang of it.
To be frank, this is nothing new.
Most people can go to the toilet while taking a shower. How difficult is it to do two things at the same time?
He was just trying to do twelve things at once, which was only slightly more difficult than an ordinary person hiding in the bathroom to wash his body and urinate secretly at the same time.
Mason, who was in the "private room" at the bottom of the river, looked at the prompts about the improvement of the skills in various branches of production that kept appearing on the translucent character cards in front of him, and for a moment he was so happy that he couldn't stop smiling.
He felt that he had finally found the path to becoming an "all-professional master" again.
"Ahem"
The hat is really unbearable.
It spoke faintly to Mason, who was gaining experience at a rapid pace:
"Business! Business! Mason, you didn't come here to kill other people. Poor Constantine is still waiting for you to save him. Your teammates in distress are waiting impatiently."
"I think he can wait a little longer. After all, there are still nine days before he will be sacrificed to the evil god."
Mason pouted.
But that's just what I said.
With some regret, he mobilized the "Bat Mason clone" who had killed a group of gangsters in Brooklyn and kept approaching the Holy of Holies shrouded in heavy rain during the water transformation.
As the Hat had expected, the ingenious detection barrier covering the Sanctuary of the Holy of Holies district in New York did not prevent the natural torrential rain from falling.
The dripping water splashed on the ancient building, washing the symbol of Kamar-Taj's magic eye exceptionally clean.
In the dark clouds and heavy rain, the water clone wearing the bat suit stood on the eaves outside the block, letting the black cloak cover his body.
The black bat helmet with raindrops falling and the gloomy sky behind it is enough to make people exclaim that Batman has arrived!
“The next step will be a little difficult.”
The hat is almost teaching step by step, it prompts:
“You have to blend your clone into the rain curtain and dilute the water molecules you can manipulate to the maximum extent. This way, your aura will also be dispersed. As long as it is fine enough, it will not trigger the alarm.
This is how all enchantments work.
It's like using a net to block out obstacles, but as long as the mesh is smaller than the mesh, you, the fish, can escape the fisherman's eyes."
“I understand!”
Standing in the rain, Mason's clone COSing as the master stretched his shoulders, took a few deep breaths, and jumped down from the eaves. He let the bat cloak spread out behind him, and the moment he glided close to the Sanctuary, he exploded his body made of water molecules to the limit.
It is no exaggeration to say that Mason himself felt a sense of "loss of control" and "tearing" pain.
But a few seconds later, the figure who had crushed his clone into tens of thousands of raindrops and reunited in the sewer along the three drainpipes of the Sanctuary stood up in the water, indicating that he had crossed that troublesome barrier.
"Very good! You are very talented."
The hat praised him in a teachable tone:
“You can handle the rest on your own. I’m not familiar with the terrain here, but I don’t think they will lock Zha Kang in the material world.
Pay close attention to devices that connect to demiplanes."
"Um."
Mason's water clone nodded, stretched out his hand to grab the fence of the Sanctuary's sewer, and turned his body into a winding stream of water, carefully avoiding those energy nodes, and arrived at the quiet hall of the Sanctuary a few minutes later.
There's no one here.
It seems that the Supreme Sorcerer of this world is not here either.
This is normal. There are three , but they are all outposts.
Mages usually gather in the headquarters of Kamar-Taj to hone their martial arts and practice magic. They are essentially a group of ascetics and would not hang out in the tempting and decadent world of New York for no reason.
"Let me see what good stuff is here?"
Mason's water clone merged into the hall and looked around, searching for possible entrances to the demiplane while "tasting" Doctor Strange's collection.
He reached out and placed his hand on a large black tripod of antique oriental style, and soon an information label popped up:
The Mother Cauldron of All Things - Secret Treasure of the Alchemist
Quality: Alchemy/Forging Artifact·Immortal Craftsmanship
Special effects: Melting everything·Extracting essence·Enhancing drug efficacy·Removing impurities
Producer: Supreme Mage Agamotto
Item Description: How dare you! How dare you put your dirty hands on the Mother Cauldron of All Things? Be careful, it will swallow you up and cook you slowly, and after 49 days, it will be refined into a "mutant elixir", just like the Monkey King in the Eastern Heaven... Yes, there is also that monkey here, but it is unlikely to appear.
hint!
The production drawings of the Mother of All Things Cauldron have been included. You can try to make it after the forging and alchemy skills reach Lv7. Perfect production requires the forging and alchemy skills to reach Lv10.
"An alchemical artifact! An upgraded version of the Hufflepuff cup. Cool!"
Mason's water clone exclaimed in admiration, and at the same time had a direct understanding of the quality of the Supreme Sorcerer's collection. How could this be Zha Kang's cage?
This is clearly a treasure trove filled with divine artifacts.
Although he couldn't take one or two items away, for a craftsman like Mason, the drawings and recipes were enough, and sooner or later he would be able to make the real thing with his own hands.
Twenty minutes later, Mason, who had obtained many legendary drawings, was at a loss.
He had searched the three floors of the Sanctuary, but found no trace of Zha Kang. Hat said helplessly:
"It seems that we have to use something dangerous. Do you have the Deluminator with you?"
"How do I carry this?"
Mason's water clone complained:
"I can't turn it into water molecules and sneak it in together. If you have a way, use this clone to perform it. We have stayed here for too long. I am a little panicked."
"Then bear with it."
The hat gritted its teeth and said:
"I will use your clone as a carrier and cast a detection spell, which should be able to find the hidden plane."
"bring it on."
Mason said.
The next moment, a heavy force was released through the connection between the original body and the clone, pressing Mason's water clone so hard that it collapsed into a puddle of water in an instant, and then closed again after more than ten seconds.
The energy possessed by this clone was almost drained, but the hat's attempt was successful.
"At the very top! There is a hidden spot under the relief of the Magic Eye. Go and take a look."
Following the hat's instructions, Mason's water clone quickly found the hiding spot, floating in the air like a black eyeball.
"Why do I feel a little panicked?"
He complained:
"This thing doesn't look normal, okay?"
"Look at it from a positive perspective. If you encounter danger, you will only lose one clone."
The hat urged, and Mason thought about it and realized that this was the truth, so he put his hand over the black eye, and the next moment, his whole body disappeared into the material world as if he was sucked into a storm.
Before Mason regained consciousness from his dizziness, he heard a familiar voice filled with surprise:
"Ah, Mason! You're finally here! Do you know how much I've been waiting for you? Quick! Take me away! That scary lunatic could be back at any moment...
Do you have cigarettes?
Give me a cigarette, God, I am dying of torture. "
